The ever-changing digital landscape seems to produce a never-ending array of tools designed to make the lives of marketers a bit easier. While we love exploring new tools and seeing what they can do, it can start to become pretty time consuming and confusing.

I often get asked about the tools we use here at Strong Coffee. Although we’re constantly testing new ones, here are five that remain staples in our office.

SocialRank

Using Since – 2016

Purpose – Identify, organize, research and sort social media audiences.

Details – We’ve been using SocialRank for a few years now. It’s one of the best tools for diving deep into Twitter and Instagram audiences. Want to know how many females from Calgary follow a certain Instagram account? Interested in the most common hashtags used by the followers of a specific Twitter account? SocialRank can help.

Possible Use – A client wants to know how many of their Twitter followers live in Edmonton and have Tweeted in the last week.

Brand24

Using Since – 2016

Purpose – Monitor the online universe for mentions of specific keywords and phrases.

Details – This type of tool is pretty standard for marketers. It took us years to find the right monitoring tool at the right price, and we finally came across Brand24 over a year ago. It’s easy to use, has lots of cool features and offers a few different affordable pricing tiers. They also just added a geo filter so you can monitor specific countries!

Possible Use – A client wants to identify those social media accounts in France that have recently used their campaign hashtag.

GoBabl

Using Since – 2016

Purpose – Monitor social media mentions within a geofenced area.

Details – Monitoring social media mentions is cool but monitoring social media mentions within a certain region on a map is cooler. When we need to watch what people are saying within a specific area, we use GoBabl.

Possible Use – We want to monitor all social media posts being generated from within a 2-kilometre radius around a festival.

Lucky Orange

Using Since – 2017

Purpose – Gain insights into how people use your website through screenshot recordings and heatmaps.

Details – When I want to wow the crowd at a presentation, I pull out my Lucky Orange demo. Is it creepy? Maybe. Is it extremely useful? Yes. Lucky Orange allows you to watch what people are doing on your website in both real-time and via recording.

Possible Use – We want to watch how people interact with certain elements on a page and make changes based on what they are doing.

Reputology

Using Since – 2016

Purpose – Monitor your online reviews and gain insights into what people are saying about your business.

Details – This is one of the most useful and easy to use tools for a business to try. Online reviews play a major role in the decision making process. Reputology curates reviews from a variety of different websites and organizes them into a dashboard.

Possible Use – A client wants to look beyond their numeric ratings and learn more about the most frequently used words inside of the reviews.

You’ll notice that tools like Google Analytics, Yoast and Moz aren’t on the list. These have moved from the “things we are trying” pile to the “things we rely on every day” pile. I’m pretty sure we’ll be using those for a long time.